tirsdag 6. desember 2016

Where on Google Earth #586

As always, the first person to post the position and whatever is interesting about the geology/hydrology/geowhatever in this location, wins the privilege of hosting the next WoGE.Previous WoGEs are collected by Felix on his blog and a KML file.

7 kommentarer:

Hi Ole,I broke my record. It just took under one minute to find place,Last week I checked Italy for somekind of marble quarry research and somehow that printmarks of basin is memorized..

AvezzanoProvince of L'Aquila, Italy42.011526, 13.409934

Avezanno (italy) Fucino Basin & seismic zone,The Fucino basin is characterized by a plain at approx. 650 m above sea level, extending over a 160 km2 area and surrounded by mountain peaks over 2000 m. This morphological depression is the result of a geological evolution dating back to the Pliocene; sedimentation of a significant continental sequence within the basin was dependent upon the interaction of climate changes and tectonic pulses aecting the erosional sedimentary system in the area. The 13 January 1915 earthquake, one of the strongest seismic events in Italy Mw  6:6; Ward and Valensise, 1989), caused 30,000 victims within a large area surrounding the Fucino basin. This event generated both deformations on a regional scale and directly perceived surface strains within the basin, as shown in the isoseismal map of Oddone (1915). ( http://web.unicam.it/unicam-info/focus/Tondi_2000.pdf)

geosomething.. geoengineering, yep one of the first geodrier on the World at there :)

Tunnels of ClaudiusThe tunnels are located south of the city. They were built by the emperor Claudius between 42 and 51 BC to realize the underground tunnel with which the emperor made the first attempt at draining the huge Lake Fucino. To create the tunnels and the main gallery, 25,000 slaves were needed. They dug 32 wells and six tunnels. The lake was largely drained, but with the fall of the Roman Empire the tunnels were obstructed and the lake returned to its previous levels. Many centuries later, Alessandro Torlonia completed the work by finally draining Lake Fucino, building on the original project of the emperor Claudius, turning the land under the great lake into a fertile plain. In 1977, the tunnels were opened as an archaeological park.( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avezzano)

I discovered this story by pure chance many years ago, when I passed the northern end of this plain in a car heading from Rome to Pescara on a job trip. I was struck by the improbable flatness of this huge plain, in contrast to the mountainous surroundings. Being chronically curious, I did what any geologist would do and tried to find out more about it.

Outside the "ring wall", the fields are the typical small gnarly old Europe type, farmed, split between sons, traded by the square meter and most likely stolen by moving border posts little by little over many centuries. Inside, thy look a lot more like "new world" - large, rectangular, highly efficient. That only makes sense when you realise that the plain is "new land". And that leads to the story of Claudius' tunnels, and Tiberius Claudius Narcissus who may have been the man in charge of the work.